Enough
by M. Sloane
Summary: On the train ride to Hogwarts for her fourth year (the Trio's fifth), Ginny shares her thoughts and feelings. Someone unexpected (to her, anyway) decides to share her compartment, too.


Enough

By: M. Sloane  
Disclaimer: Anything you know belongs to the wonderful JK Rowling.  
A/N: This is pretty different from my only other uploaded fic, Drastic Measures. This I wrote, and edited, and edited, and edited, and edited… I looked for a beta reader but things just didn't work. I like this, though. Beware, spoilers! And enjoy! (this has been updated! Not the storyline, but parts).

It was early. For once in her life, they had gotten to platform nine and three-quarters with time to spare.  Kings Cross wasn't bustling with obnoxious, impatient muggles, and they didn't have to run to get everything onto the train.  No anxious count down on their watches, no bitten nails, no strained tempers. They were ahead of schedule, and Ginny was pleased.

She sat in a compartment with the Trio for lack of anywhere else to be.  Hermione had her nose in a book, inhaling the information before her.  Ron was stuffing a chocolate frog into his mouth (_At this hour? _Ginny asked herself, _We just had breakfast!_), while attempting to quiet that crazy minuscule owl of his.

And then there was Harry. The Boy Who Lived. Ginny was going to marry him some day. Sure, they never talked, there was no chemistry, and she was like a little sister to him, but it was going to happen.  How else would he become a member of the family? Yeah, he was an honorary member right now, but the Weasleys (mainly Mrs. Weasley) were hoping for something a little more… _legal_. Papers, vows and all. Official business. 

Ginny was tired of it.  She wasn't in love with Harry. She didn't even _like_ Harry all that much. Yeah, yeah, yeah- she owed him her life, from her first year and that whole affair with the Chamber of Secrets. But that was three years ago. 

And it hadn't been a romantic man-of-her-dreams-rides-in-on-a-white-horse kind of rescue like everyone played it out to be. She was eleven years old! Guys still had cooties then- or something like that, even the famous Harry Potter.

Ginny sighed as Ron sat back down.  Pretty soon she'd get that glance from him.  The one that said, _Go away, leave us alone. You don't belong here_, etc. Hermione would give her a quick glance of apology that was laced with pity, and her soon-to-be-husband Harry wouldn't even spare a look.

This time, Harry was gazing out the window.  It wasn't as if he could see anything- it was raining harder than it had a year ago that day.  There were blurs of color as people arrived, but it wasn't really anything to look at.  She wondered what he was thinking about.

He must have felt her eyes on him, because he suddenly looked up.  Noticing her stare, he raised his eyebrows in question.

She didn't blush, like people assume she would.  Ginny held his gaze for a moment, then looked over at Hermione, to Ron, then back at Harry.  She, too, raised her eyebrows in question, but with a look of concern rather than curiosity. A small gesture in a silent language- she knew he understood. He looked back out the window.

She would **never** ask Harry if he was all right where his brother could hear. Ron would laugh, and tease, and make things uncomfortable because he was so **sure** that his dear little sister Ginny was in love with his best friend.

That was a load of dragon's dung.

**They** never asked if Harry was all right. They hadn't at all this summer, even when Dumbledore had finally allowed Harry to come to the Burrow.  Ginny had seen him sit outside at night.  He didn't sleep.  Once Ron was snoring, Harry would go downstairs and sit outside, all alone.  She could hear him on the stairs.  Sometimes, she knew, he cried.  He never faced the house, but she saw his shoulders shake.  She'd seen him furiously wipe away where tears might be.

_I should have joined him_, she thought.

Not because she was in love with him like everyone thought, but because he needed comfort and his friends obviously weren't any help.  Hermione, Ron, _everyone_ avoided the subject of the third task.  They didn't ask, and Harry didn't tell.  But Ginny knew that Harry couldn't just hold it in.  She knew what it was like to live through traumatic experiences.  She had, after all, almost been killed by Tom Riddle.  If people remembered it at all, they remembered her as being foolish.  Silly little girl, trusting a diary that talks back.  Trusting _Tom Riddle_'s diary!

How the hell was she supposed to know that Tom Riddle was You-Know-Who?  The name Tom Riddle doesn't exactly say _Dark Lord_ or anything.  It was even on a big award at Hogwarts.  She had no real friends in her year, she had no real friends _at all_, who else could she turn to but her diary? There was no way she could have known there was any evil in him or the diary.  And he was so _nice_.

But **thank god** for Harry, saving her life!  Now their lives were forever entwined, due to his heroic rescue.

But everyone forgot that Ginny had no idea that she was talking to evil.  They just remembered that Harry Potter had ridden in and saved her life. And little, foolish Ginny had to be grateful.

She had been scared. _So _scared. And while everyone rejoiced in Harry's heroism, she got to deal with the fact that it was _her_ fault.  It was her diary that Riddle had come out of; she was the one they had come to rescue… Harry could have died if Fawkes hadn't been there. All of that.

No one ever asked if she was all right.

The train jerked forward, and Ginny was brought back to the compartment.  There was the look from Ron, right on time.  The _go away_ was flashing expectantly in his eyes. Hermione looked up from her book on cue with her _sorry_ look of pity. Harry kept looking out the window.

She got up and looked at them for a moment.  These people were the closest things she had to friends.  The Brain, her brother, and the Hero.  They weren't much.  She wished, for once, they'd appreciate her.

She walked slowly down the train, looking for an empty compartment.  She couldn't sit with a group of friends- they'd look at her like she was some sort of freak.  Trying to be in their 'posse' or whatever the "in crowd" was calling their group these days.  

She walked past the doors in her casual, slow, pace, curiously flicking her eyes to look through the compartment windows.  Inhabited, inhabited, inhabited… She didn't think she'd be so lucky as to find an empty one.

After long searching, she found one near the end of the train. Thank God. She sat next to the window and leaned against it, looking back at the way they had come.  She could only see dark, shadowy blurs due to the rain, but she didn't mind- she didn't like the scenery anyway.  She just wanted to sit and relax. The train ride was going to be pretty boring, just sitting alone.  But she'd rather do that than sit being ignored by some random people.

Ginny was about to fall asleep when the compartment door opened.  She looked up at the intruder.  He closed the door and sat down across from her, leaning against the window in the same manner she was and looking out. Ginny stared.

"Are you lost?" 

"No," Harry replied, not looking up from the window.

She couldn't believe it. Harry Potter had willingly entered her compartment. She hadn't invited him, and he should have been hanging out with his friends.

"I don't get it," Ginny said.

"What's there to get?" he asked.

"Why are you here?" she replied.

Harry blinked, finally looking at her. "Why not?"  
"Oh, I don't know, maybe because we don't talk, you're my brother's best friend, and you guys kick me out of your compartment so you can be alone!" Ginny exploded at him.  Harry, taken aback, didn't answer. In his silence, she added, "Why aren't you there, anyway?"

"Why aren't I where?" Harry asked.  
"In the compartment you kicked me out of," Ginny told him.

"Ron and Hermione needed to talk about things," Harry said, looking out the window again.

"Oh."

They were silent for a while. They didn't need to talk- being there was enough.  They weren't friends, they weren't in love, they were barely anything to each other, but the quiet company sufficed. In the eerie but comforting silence, Ginny slowly built up the confidence to say what she'd wanted to say for a long time.

"Are you all right?"

Harry's head jerked up in surprise. "What?"

"Are you all right?" Ginny repeated.  This time, there was no Ron to tease her, no Hermione to silence her with a look.  They acted as if forgetting it ever happened would help. As if asking if he was all right would hurt him.

"Of course I'm all right," Harry said, giving her a smile. "Why wouldn't I be?"

She wasn't fooled, but only because she knew the exact smile. It was a good false smile, it looked genuine, but it wasn't.  Ginny had used her own a number of times herself.  She flashed a false smile of her own for a second, then gave him a look.

Harry said nothing, and looked out the window.

"I heard you on the stairs, you know," she told him. "I know you didn't sleep. I could see you out my window."

"So?" Harry snapped, his green eyes suddenly blazing, "Someone saw **brave, heroic** Harry Potter in his weakest moments. Someone finally spotted that I'm not perfect!"

Ginny didn't know what to say- she'd never thought that Harry didn't enjoy being who he was- the brave hero, the Boy Who Lived.

Instead, she told him, "I didn't know who he was."  
"What?"

"Tom," she said, "I didn't know."

"How could you?" Harry seemed surprised that Ginny hadn't let go of what had happened in her first year.

"I'm sorry, you know," Ginny told him.

"For what?"

"You could have died!"

"I could have died on the way here this morning," he pointed out.

Ginny gave him a dry look.  "Facing You-Know-Who and a basilisk is a bit more dangerous than a trip to the train station."

"It wasn't your fault," Harry said, "I don't blame you. No one should."  
"It wasn't your fault either, you know."

The room went still.  Ginny was suddenly very aware of the heart in her chest. She felt the tension, the fear, and the pain.  His cold, hard, green eyes were locked on hers.  Perhaps he was surprised- no one had dared mention anything to him before.

He blinked. Ginny knew what he'd do next.

"_Don't_ look out that window again, Harry."

"_Don't_ tell me what to do, Ginny,"

He didn't look out the window, though.

"Listen, I don't know what happened during the third task, and I wont pretend I do," she said, "All I know is that you and Cedric were portkeyed away, and when you came back, Cedric was dead.  And I know that you met You-Know-Who on the other side."

Harry pretended to be really interested in his fingernails.

"I don't know what happened when you got there, either, except that You-Know-Who killed Cedric. And you brought him back. He might have gotten there first, Harry! He might have been portkeyed to You-Know-Who alone and never been seen or heard from again. At least you brought him back. There was nothing you could do to prevent it! You had no idea!

"He offered me the cup. I should have taken it," Harry whispered. "He said, 'You take it. You should win. That's twice you've saved my neck in here.' I hear him say it every night, Ginny, and I couldn't save him the time when it really mattered."

"Harry, you can't blame yourself for this!"

"Yes I _can_!" he shouted. "It was _rigged_, Ginny! Voldemort's man did everything he could to get _me_ to that cup first. And I let Cedric have half of it; I took him to _my_ doom, where _I_ was supposed to meet _my_ end, and _he_ met it for me.  I gave half the glory, he gave his whole life."

Ginny watched him- she didn't know what to say.

Suddenly, Harry began to tell her from the beginning.  Everything came spilling out, with Ginny barely ready to hear it.  Tears streamed down her cheeks as he recounted the night of the third task.  And then he came to Priori Incantatem.

Voice faltering, Harry told Ginny what happened, reliving the moments before his eyes as he spoke.  He stared wide-eyed at the wall, seeing not the paint, but his parents, Cedric, Bertha Jorkins, another old man, and Voldemort.

_You-Know-Who_, Ginny thought. _How could Tom have turned into such an evil person?_ Her thoughts turned to his parents… How it must have been to see them.  There were so many things to say, and yet he could never say them- Harry explained that they were only echoes of the lives You-Know-Who had taken and nothing more. Unless he faced the Dark Lord once more, he would never get to see them again.

And Cedric- how his echo must haunt Harry's dreams!  The whispers, the moments from before and after his death, they all must be so vivid in his mind, taunting him by day from the back of his mind and replaying to him every night in his dreams. 

She was horrified when she heard how stupid Fudge had been.  Believing Reeta Skeeter over Dumbledore and the Boy Who Lived?  She wanted to knock some sense into him, but she knew it was worthless to try.

Ginny abruptly realized that Harry had not really had a childhood.  There was his parents' death, and life with the Dursleys, and You-Know-Who forever chasing him, making life unbearable.  This was the moment for him, when innocence was finally stripped away.  How he must have screamed from his soul…  How he must still scream…

Ginny found her way out of her thoughts and looked at Harry.  She realized that at some point he had cried, though he desperately tried to hide it.

"Oh, Harry," Ginny said, sitting beside him and wrapping her arms around him.

"I don't want your pity, Ginny,"

"Of course you don't," she told him, "But I'll promise you something."

"What's that?" Harry asked.

"I won't forget it happened."

There they sat, side by side in silence, leaning against each other for the rest of the train ride.  They weren't in love, and they weren't really friends, but they were there to support one another, strength and comfort that they both so desperately needed.

And that was enough.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A/N: I might edit this more (parts are annoying me) and upload it again. But it'll only be a few word changes if I do that. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it.

People have asked if I'm going to continue it, and my answer is no. I felt like that was the end. For me, at least. 


End file.
